Ranasinghe, A. W. I. P.
Fernando, Buddhika
Sumathipala, Athula
Gunathunga, Wasantha
Article History
Received: 25 July 2019
Accepted: 27 July 2020
First Online: 5 August 2020
Ethics approval and consent to participate
: Participation in the study was purely on a voluntary basis with informed verbal consent. During pre-testing of the study instrument, it was evident that many doctors preferred to avoid giving written consent even after they were informed that the data would be anonymised, since the questionnaire contained questions about their conduct, which made this study highly sensitive. We obtained ethics review and approval from two local ethics review committees (Ethical Review Committee, Faculty of Medicine, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka and the Ethical Committee, Postgraduate Medical Centre, General Hospital (Teaching), Kandy, Sri Lanka) in addition to the initial ethics approval granted by the Ethical Review Committee, Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. Approval was sought from all relevant institutions due to the sensitive nature of the questions asked. All three ERCs approved the study methodology including informed verbal consent process for the study.Furthermore, permission to conduct the research was obtained from relevant hospital directors prior to data collection.
: Not applicable.
: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.